ONLINE“Cinema Sabaya” Live Q&A

Join us virtually for a live conversation with director Orit Fouks Rotem, moderated by Nahanni Rous.

Orit Fouks Rotem graduated from the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel School with honors in 2012, winning her class’s Promising Director Award. Her diploma film, “Staring Match,” was screened in festivals all over the world and won the Grand Prix award at the Hangzhou Festival in China, Best Screenplay Award at Tel Aviv Student Film Festival and an Honorable Mention at the Jerusalem Film Festival. After graduating, Orit co-directed a documentary series for the Israeli channel YES Doco, worked as a film facilitator and director for an Israeli NGO, making films with at-risk youth, and worked as a filmmaking teacher of groups of women in Acres and Givat Haviva. She wrote and directed two short fiction films: “You Remain Silent,” which was part of the Abraham Heffner tribute, and “Voice Over,” which premiered in Sarajevo and Jerusalem Film Festival 2018. “Cinema Sabaya” is Orit’s debut feature film.

Nahanni Rous is the host and senior producer of “Can We Talk?,” the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, which explores the intersection of gender, history and Jewishness. She also produces “Those Who Were There, Voices from the Holocaust,” a podcast drawn from the recorded testimonies at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. She has been senior producer of “Making Gay History,” a podcast based on Eric Marcus’s decades-old audio archive of interviews with LGBTQ activists, and was a founding staff member of the media organization Just Vision and a producer of Just Vision’s documentary film, “Encounter Point,” which followed several Israelis and Palestinians in their peace-building and nonviolent endeavors.

About the film:

Nine Arab and Jewish women take part in a video workshop hosted by a young female filmmaker. The women (featuring a mix of seasoned and nonprofessional actors) learn to tell their stories in video. Sharing personal stories of frustration and joy, they share their videos with the group, with each raw story forcing them to examine their beliefs, identities and ambitions.

This live event is included with a festival pass or ticket to the “Cinema Sabaya” film screening.